Russia’s CEC submits six pre-election visuals to expert examination

These are the visuals of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia and the Just Russia Party,” member of the CEC workgroup said

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MOSCOW, November 24 (Itar-Tass) – Russia’s Central Electoral Commission has submitted a total of six pre-election visuals for an expert examination to law enforcement agencies, Maya Grishina, a member of the CEC workgroup for informational disputes told reporters Thursday.

“These are the visuals of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia and the Just Russia Party,” she said. “Like the visuals of other parties, they were scrutinized at the request of TV channels, as the latter had perceived in them the showings of extremism, the proliferation of information spearheaded at competitors, and other infringements.”

A number of parties have heeded the channels’ remarks and have edited their visuals but two parties have refused to do so.

Since the CEC workgroup does not have the powers to conduct expert studies, “it didn’t take any decisions and the visual materials were submitted to the Prosecutor’s Office, the Interior Ministry and the Federal Service for Supervision in the Field of Telecommunications, IT and Mass Communications for an expert assessment.”

Maya Grishina recalled that “the proliferation of information containing the propaganda of extremism offers the grounds for canceling a party’s registration for the elections,” but no such issue is on the agenda at the moment because the TV channels prevented the airing of the visuals.

Grishina declined to forecast when the expert examination is to be over. “Unfortunately, these things take a lot of time, and we’d like to hope the results will be known before the election.”

When Itar-Tass asked her to assess the electoral promotion campaign in general, she said: “The parties have flooded the CEC with complaints at one another but they mostly concern the local, and sometimes interpersonal, situations.”

“For the most part, the political parties have displayed law abidance,” Grishina said. “The raising of the upper limits of financial election funds, which enables the parties to legalize their promotion /spending/.”

As she mentioned once again the problem of the visuals, Grishina said members of the workgroup have an understanding of the importance of taking account of the situation as they improve the provisions of legislative acts, including the ones in the sphere of pre-election promotion campaigns.